Biometric-authentication options come in different sizes, irises, fingerprints, and voices.

Perhaps a laptop’s built-in fingerprint reader works fine for some companies. A hospital, however, may want external scanners to protect an electronic-health-records (EHR) system.

Treefort Technologies uses facial-verification services from identity-fraud detector iProov to confirm that a client’s likeness matches the image of a presented ID. Such verification can protect major real-estate transactions.

Some Treefort employees, however, not at the center of high-stakes transactions, log into their laptops via fingerprint and two-factor authentication.

Authentication pros who spoke with IT Brew laid out biometric-deployment options—some familiar, some requiring privacy assurances, and some left in doubt as deepfakes improve.

Read more here.—BH

Personalization has long been the key to quality customer engagement. So what if AI (yep, the hot topic of the year) could help take personalization even further?

If you learn how to integrate AWS with Salesforce, you could unlock real-time insights, derive deeper customer understanding, and thus, deliver personalized engagement at scale.

That’s real-time personalization at scale, btw. If you’re thinking, Um, sign me UP, join AWS’s webinar to learn more.

The webinar will cover AI-driven strategies for transforming the customer experience. Register here, and let the learnings commence.

Your next cybersecurity incident could be the result of someone else’s breach.

There’s ample evidence to suggest that software supply chain attacks have been on the rise for years. And a recent report by the think tank Ponemon Institute, in conjunction with security firm Synopsys, found 59% of nearly 1,300 IT and IT security practitioners reported their organization had experienced at least one such attack.

Approximately 28% of respondents pinned the attack on an “unpatched open-source vulnerability previously detected, and 23% of respondents say it was the result of a zero day vulnerability,” according to the report. Others pointed to a compromise of build pipelines via malicious injection (21%), malicious dependencies (19%), and other causes (8%).

It’s a familiar story to security practitioners: The threat actors behind software supply chain attacks are adopting sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures faster than defenders can keep up.

Read more here.—TM

Black Girls Code (BGC) is setting out to see “one million girls of color” in the tech industry by 2040. The nonprofit—founded by Kimberly Bryant in 2011—seeks to address the “underrepresentation of women of color in tech and business,” offering a variety of free and paid programming for girls and women aged seven to 25, including boot camps, summer camps, and hackathons, according to the organization’s website.

Headquartered in San Francisco, BGC already has a presence in 15 cities and will host summer camps in Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Chicago, Raleigh, Durham, Boston, Arlington, and NYC, according to CEO Cristina Jones, who said she also hopes to launch a program in Puerto Rico soon.

IT Brew caught up with Jones to chat about current initiatives and how the org is making moves to give Black girls “a real seat at the table.”

Keep reading here.—AF

IT teams, got AI on your mind? It’s a powerful tool for efficiency and cost savings, but it also presents new risks. In Ironclad’s guide, you’ll learn how to use contracts as a frontline defense, how to evaluate AI in CLMs, and more. Check it out.